U.S. Companies Behind Iraq Weapons Program

By Mitchel Cohen, 23 December 2002

Seven years ago I contacted Congress Rep. D. Riegle of Michigan who
had headed an investigation of US corporate sales to Iraq. He sent me
a summary of the hearings, in which were listed some of the biological
agents shipped by US corporations to Iraq, with George H.W. Bush's
approval as head of the CIA and later as Vice President under Ronald
Reagan.

These included anthrax, brucellosis, gas gangrene, and toxic varieties
of E.Coli and Salmonella bacteria. I do not recall seeing West Nile
Virus on that list, although some officials have recently inserted it
there.

Now, the White House is using the excuse of the existence of these
biological agents, which Bush SOLD TO IRAQ, to bomb the hell out of
them, and to inoculate 500,000 US troops with experimental,
genetically engineered anthrax and smallpox vaccines.

In addition, uniforms were soaked in Permethrin pesticide, and
soldiers (as well as civilians on the ground) were subjected to
aerosalized depleted uranium. All contributed to Gulf War Syndrome,
which has affected tens of thousands of US veterans. I wrote about
this in numerous green and leftist journals, including
Synthesis/Regeneration, Fifth Estate, Green Politics, Z magazine, and
elsewhere.

Now, Iraq releases its report to the UN, which the US literally stole
and distributed heavily censored copies. Over 9,000 of the 12,000
pages in the report were deleted by the United States before
distributing to non-Permanent members of the UN.

But did they really think they could keep such a report secret?
Certainly, Iraq would have put the report onto computer disks, which
could be made available via email DIRECTLY to anyone who wanted it. So
why would the US go to such great lengths to censor it? Did they think
no one would notice?

Well, someone has, and now a reporter from Germany has further
documented the evidence of massive US collusion with Saddam Hussein in
sending biological material as well as nuclear weapons materiel and
assistance to Iraq. Please read the story below.

If the US officials are, like Bush, not really as stupid as they
appear (obvious attempts at censorship), what game are they
playing. Of course, the possibility is that they really ARE that
stupidand dangerous.

One note: Germany will be entering the Security Council with four
other countries as part of the non-Permanent members contingent, on
January 1 for the next two years. German companies feature heavily in
the sale of chemical weapons to Iraq. The pressure will be on Germany
to go along with US pressure to bomb. So it is interesting that this
article first appeared in a leading German progressive daily
newspaper, before it was featured Wednesday on Democracy Now.

Hewlett Packard, Dupont, Honeywell and other major U.S. corporations,
as well as governmental agencies including the Department of Defense
and the nation's nuclear labs, all illegally helped Iraq to build
its biological, chemical and nuclear weapons programs.

On Wednesday, December 18, Geneva-based reporter Andreas Zumach broke
the story on the US national listener-sponsored radio and television
show Democracy Now! Zumach's Berlin-based paper Die
Tageszeitung plans to soon publish a full list of companies and
nations who have aided Iraq. The paper first reported on Tuesday that
German and U.S. companies had extensive ties to Iraq but didn't
list names.

Zumach obtained top-secret portions of Iraq's 12,000-page weapons
declaration that the US had redacted from the version made available
to the non-permanent members of the UN Security Council.

We have 24 major U.S. companies listed in the report who gave very
substantial support especially to the biological weapons program but
also to the missile and nuclear weapons program, Zumach
said. Pretty much everything was illegal in the case of nuclear and
biological weapons. Every form of cooperation and supplies was
outlawed in the 1970s.

Zumach also said the U.S. Departments of Energy, Defense, Commerce,
and Agriculture quietly helped arm Iraq. U.S. government nuclear
weapons laboratories Lawrence Livermore, Los Alamos and Sandia trained
traveling Iraqi nuclear scientists and gave non-fissile material for
construction of a nuclear bomb.

There has never been this kind of comprehensive layout and listing
like we have now in the Iraqi report to the Security Council so this
is quite new and this is especially new for the U.S involvement which
has been even more suppressed in the public domain and the
U.S. population, Zumach said.

The names of companies were supposed to be top secret. Two weeks ago
Iraq provided two copies of its full 12,000-page report, one to the
International Atomic Energy Agency in Geneva, and one to the United
Nations in New York. Zumach said the U.S. broke an agreement of the
Security Council and blackmailed Colombia, which at the time was
presiding over the Council, to take possession of the UN's only
copy. The U.S. then proceeded to make copies of the report for the
other four permanent Security Council nations, Britain, France, Russia
and China. Only yesterday did the remaining members of the Security
Council receive their copies. By then, all references to foreign
companies had been removed.

According to Zumach, only Germany had more business ties to Iraq than
the U.S. As many as 80 German companies are also listed in Iraq's
report. The paper reported that some German companies continued to do
business with Iraq until last year.

Democracy Now! has published translations of Andreas Zumach's
articles from Die Tageszeitung at http://www.democracynow.org/Zumach.htm

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